Robert Castaneros

Leland Quarterly | Spring 2022

An Ode to the Summer Quarter, a 1998 Toyota Corolla, a House in Louisville, and Grief

Robert Castaneros

After Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” There’s a strange joy in the way that we steal Nathan’s car. The way we grab the keys from his drawer and then we fly down El Camino Real. I mean it when I say this golden shitbox can fly, and it makes me cool-

er than the cool kids in high school — the ones who were sure of themselves — because, here, we can talk about hard feelings. The feelings that don’t fly, but linger until there’s nothing left. Like grief — like when Mama Bella dies in Kentucky, but you’re in California, so school

assignments and tenuous friendships are the only thing left to grieve. And now we have no home in Louisville. No teleseryes, no broken exercise bike, just memory lurking in an empty house, where we once heard the laughs of the Banzon clan until late

at night, and now it’s approaching midnight in quiet Palo Alto, and we fly on empty streets. I stick my head out the window, and the summer winds strike my face and ruffle my hair, as I think of all the ways I can tell it to you straight,

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An Ode to the... | Robert Castaneros

Hey, can we call tonight? I miss the sound of your voice, I miss the way we kiss, when our hands interlock the right way, and I miss how you sing to me when it’s just us and the silence, and I miss how I sing to you with sin-

-cerity, with grief. But the kind of grief that repairs itself, the kind of we-akness that makes me fly, away from a body that wanted to be thin, rather than loved, away from a body that filled itself with wine and beer and gin

when it craved warmth. And miraculously, I’ve found that safety in the way we whisper secrets to each other as we fly through suburban streets, a vehicular jazz, an improvisational way of comforting a friend while flying through intersections. June,

July, and August — I thank you for the love you showed us, when you proved that we could heal in unlikely places — in a 1998 Toyota Corolla that’s ready to die. Nevertheless, we fly — with such strange joy and peace — that we forget we die soon.

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